It’s not that I’m like this all the time, and luckily it’s not scary depression. However it is the kind of depression that stops me from easily doing [new] things or finding much joy in anything. When you’re relatively freshly moved to a place and in the search for work, most things are new. Glory, it does seem easier to sleep and hide at home and knit rather than push through this layer of bleurgh to be more me than I’m letting myself be.

Rationally I can tell that there’s a layer of depression weighing down on me and it’s clouding my interpretation of the world and my relationship with the world. The world, I know, is weird, but generally fantastic and there are many good things in my life.

Tim for example is more than good and supports me in so many ways. I’m seeing a therapist who is interesting and helpful. I’m really glad to be finally living in Linz, and I enjoy the size of a smaller city (200,000) after the last years in Berlin. I’m meeting lovely new people here and take my knitting out to the local Stitch and Bitch.  And luckily on those hide at home days, there is knitting while watching Six Feet Under. And at least if I’m knitting I’m still doing something while I hide at home and Six Feet Under is a fitting accompaniment to both knitting and the blues.

In a couple of months Tim and I will be in Australia getting married and enjoying the summer and building boats. There is so much to be happy and joyful about, but it’s so incredibly frustrating that a forcefield of inertia is preventing me from actively engaging with my life to the full extent possible.

Anyway. More than writing about depression I wanted to share a detail photo of my grandmother’s wedding dress.

I think that modifying this dress will be the most intimidating thing about getting married to Tim – he’s great just the way he is and I’m so happy to have him in my life.

The dress is almost 80 years old and feels very vulnerable – I’m a little afraid to take it from being my grandmother’s wedding dress to mine and am thinking about having a second dress available to change into after the more formal bits of the ceremony.  I’m slowly working up the courage to tidy up the hem and shorten the sleeves in preparation for an Australian January wedding. Wish me luck!

Those three weeks earlier this year were exhausting and in many ways I didn’t feel very settled during my time back here. Perhaps it was the excitement of introducing T to my favourite people and things of A-Town or the energy that pervades the city in the lead-up to Fringe and the festival. And the previous visit home was for a frantic month as I packed up, sold my things and rather rudely told Adelaide that things were over between us.   Luckily, despite the fact that my Dad is getting older and frailer due to his lung disease, I feel suprisingly relaxed and happy on this return trip.

A lot of my current feelings towards Adelaide have a lot to do with maturity and finally beginning to feel at home in Linz with T.  So despite missing T like the blazes and really wanting to have him around to support me as I help my family, it feels good to be back here and to begin to assess my old home with the eyes of someone older (remember, this is the town you settle down and have kids with).

Another big reasons for loving my hometown this time around is that it’s winter. I’m missing the summer in Linz, but in some ways the chill of a hibernating Adelaide is so satisfying. It’s tea and toast time, eating soup and good bread with friends weather rather than all-out party season.

It’s actually been raining here, so for the first time in almost four years I’m seeing Adelaide (and my old garden) with green growth, both good and unwanted. There’s something wonderful about a cool weather garden and the smell of soil and decaying leaves as you pull up weeds. As much as I love being able to container garden and finally have a balcony to fill with plants I have missed the mindfulness that comes from weeding an actual garden bed.

The other day I battled, pulled and dug against one of my favoured old enemies for a half hour while my father rested in the living room.  Looking after Dad is a very slow, sometimes sad and frustrating business and I needed some active destruction to balance me out. Besides the stress relief of weeding and the satisfaction of dirt under your nails and a visible change to the space, I love weeding as it lets me observe the techniques that plants use to spread themselves around.

My weeding enemies - the unidentified climbing succulent plant, plus ivy and soursobs (oxalis)

On Friday the plants I attacked were ivy and some weird succulent climbing thing that I don’t know the name of, but would love to identify so I can accurately curse it.  The plant is growing up and around an overgrown shrub and despite intermittent and zealous attacks over previous years it persists and spreads around.

This plant just makes me get all awe-full and think about evolution. It is incredibly cleverly constructed and seems to propagate itself as you weed it. The leaves and sections of this plant fall off far too easily and forgetting pieces on the ground gives them a chance to take root and spread themeselves around.

This kind of promiscuous growth demands action and despite only being back in Adelaide temporarily I started down the dangerous path of Significant Garden Plans for the family home. Obviously the leggy shrub would go, but the winter weather calls for replanting the front beds with fruit trees, which leads to reading plant catalogues and considering just where a pizza oven could go.

At some point I looked up and realised that it felt like I’d never gone away from here. Tim, Linz, Berlin, working on School of Webcraft and all of those things seemed light years and lifetimes away.

Oh, it is a weird feeling to be here and to feel so very comfortable and to feel the pull of this place pulling me back. At the same time Tim and the actual everyday life I’ve chosen is in Linz and as I fall asleep I’ll be wanting to wake up back in our bed and go for a run along the Danube.

I’ve lived overseas (on and off) for about 5 years now and it has always been with the knowledge that distance makes it much harder to maintain contact with family and friends. Either you’re here or you’re there, and despite the best intentions and the latest in technology it’s almost impossible to maintain or grow a relationship in the same way that realtime and realspace allows. There’s something about biorhythms, a shared physical environment, eating and drinking together that will always be more valuable than endless Skype conversations and email lists.

It’s one of the reasons why, even today, organisations still spend huge amounts of money and burn fossil fuels to organise face-to-face meetings and why for the last two years Tim and I spent weeks of time on train trips between Berlin and Linz. Luckily of course, I’m finally living in Linz and the tension that resulted from never being quite at home has begun to ease.

Being in a long-distance [romantic] relationship within the confines of Europe has also obscured the many other long-distance relationships that have evolved: all the many across Australia, to those scattered in Finland and Brussels, Newcastle Upon Tyne, the Norwegian bits of the Arctic Circle, Biggleswade, Sheffield, Brighton, Dunedin, London and beyond. Of course, now with the move to Linz, those who made up my community in Berlin are now more people far afield. Within my head when I think of these friends I also think of the people I’ve met briefly, desired as friends but have never had a full chance to become friends with.

So lately, as annoyed emails have begun to arrive from those I’ve neglected I’m trying to work out how to maintain these relationships, how to provide intermittent meaningful connections that transcend Facebook messages and work for those who are far less digitally embedded than I am.

Letters and packages I guess. I managed to send one off to Berlin yesterday.

That’s what’s been bugging me for the last week or so. Today though my tyrannies of distance are familial. My father has finally asked for me to come back home and visit him, sooner rather than later. He turned 76 last week and he’s been ill for ages, so this isn’t such a surprise.

I can remember when he rang up to tell me he’d been diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis and that slowly, his lungs were scarring and being eaten away by a autoimmune response. I was in Helsinki at the time and even though my memory places me in the flat on Mechelininkatu I lived there in 2006. Somehow that timing feels wrong, maybe it was when I was back in 2008?

So for at least 3 years while I’ve been away there’s always been the knowledge that one day I’d have to go back home to hang out with Dad and not really know how long I’d be back in Adelaide for.

What’s amazing though is that for far longer than was expected, Dad’s lung capacity stayed strong. Based on advice from a doctor friend and responding to data from drug trials on rats, he started to take high levels of anti-oxidants and until recently his lungs were good. But at the end of last year he was hospitalised following a stomach flu and as seems to be the way, suddenly felt, I don’t know what. His age? Breathless?

Putting aside the fact that Dad is ill, I am looking forward to hanging out with him some more. As a child he preferred to teach me maths than play sports, but as I’ve grown older I realise how much he’s influenced me – to love science and to be more of an independent worker than an employee. Without a doubt, one of the reasons why I’m with Tim is that in many good ways he reminds me of my father.

So yeah, I don’t really know how to finish this post. I still need to work out the best tickets and how to fit this around work and how to manage being away from Linz  so soon after I arrived here.

Maybe it will give me more motivation to write postcards.

This week I’m overwhelmed with visits by half a dozen lovely people primarily from Adelaide band Brillig. It’s an absolute pleasure to be showing the first arrivals, Matt and Elizabeth around my new city.

I’m almost shaking with excitement for Thursday when some of my most absolute favourite people in the entire world come to visit. I think I’ll need to visit some more fotoautomats so that I can record their visits too!

It’s been a lovely couple of weeks here in Berlin. From the first day of April the sun started shining and people started smiling. Then the most amazing thing happened, the horse chestnut tree (Rosskastaniene) in the courtyard (hof) began to change from branches with buds to a tree with leaves. Sure, trees get leaves every spring, but from my regular typing place by the kitchen window I finally could pay attention to the process.

Let me tell you something fascinating, trees burst into leaf from the bottom up.  Over three days I could effectively see the sap flowing up the trunk and along the branches.  From hour to hour different leaves had opened and I kinda forgot to take photos of the process because I kept on saying to my flatmate “Can you see that? It’s like a switch has been turned on or something!”

It was pretty exciting.

Here’s a photo from today, two weeks after the leaves unfurled:

The season actually appeared to burst from tree branch, bulb, seed and sun. I guess that’s why it’s called spring?

I needed to live in Europe before I understood that in my part of Australia, the seasons of Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter are Euro-centric ideas laid on top of a vastly different climate.  Even though it would make more sense to acknowledge traditional indigenous seasons, we persist in describing Australian weather with concepts that don’t adequately describe the actual seasonal patterns. I feel that one of the reasons discussions about climate change fail to influence people, is because a large part of the developed (and emitting) world’s population is semantically isolated from what is normal for their region.

Because of the ways in which language and culture are transmitted, the experience of being an Austrlian in Europe (and more specifically Britain) is that of normality: birds whistle familiar sounding melodies, trees are the shape of picture book trees and some houses are actually shaped like childrens’ generic house drawings. It may be ‘normal’ here, but however lovely Berlin in Spring may be, thinking about the contrasts makes me miss and desire the strange shapes, sounds and smells of South Australia, the experiences that I grew up in.

I think the black and white local magpies (Eltern) with their kleptomanic tendencies and dark blue flash of wing are quite beautiful, but there’s something about the sound of Australian magpies which makes up for their more violent tendency to swoop and attack while nesting [mp3].

by Dave – aka Emptybelly

The thing I most heartwrenchingly miss has always been the rainbow lorikeet, its swooping flash of colour as it flies through my favourite park and the chatter a flock of them make around dusk [the latter third of this mp3]. When I lived in Finland and made my garden wall, I painted a lorikeet to live in the plants.  If I could be reborn as an animal I’d be a lorikeet.

I had intended this to be more of a post about how marvellous the weather has been, rather than a meditation on climate, language, postcolonialism and the strange experience of being a European (Australian) “other” in Europe. Inevitably though, the feelings associated with new locations, travel and identity lead to a specific feeling of missing what is first known and familiar.

I think that I’m most interested in the ‘betweenness’ of two people becoming friends and one of the topics I wish to explore is how a developing friendship is acknowledged: how do they negotiate and acknowledge that transition, what level of formality is assumed, are there cultural associations marking the transition of friendship?

To elaborate on this point, I’ll paraphrase my Quebecois flatmate:

How many of your Facebook friends do you kiss [on the cheek]?

I have close friends in all of the places I lived who I hug or kiss upon greeting, but from my perspective that is not part of my formal culture as it is for other, particularly French speaking people.

At a language level does the shift from the formal to informal pronoun (vous/ tu in French, Sie, du in German) happen before, at a similar time or after the cheek kissing? I have a feeling that traditionally, language shifts would have been a more important signifier of intimacy in Europe, but what about with languages such as Japanese of Korean?

I’m interested in exploring this cultural friendship marker further, at some point after first meeting, two people decide that they are now “kissing friends”. What type of developments and conversations happen to encourage that transition? At what level of intimacy and shared personal histories does this happen? Are most people unaware of this transition or do they make a conscious decision to move a friendship forward?

This article from the Psychology Today website that has really helped me focus some of my thoughts about the process of how we become friends. I’d particularly like to get hold of a book by Beverly Pehr called Friendship Processes which is mentioned in the article and unavailable in Berlin libraries.

If you’d like to support my DIYMasters you can make a donation, or you could buy Friendship Processes or another item from my Amazon wishlist.

Visitors to Adelaide during festival season (Adelaide Festival of Arts, Fringe Festival and Womadelaide) are given a strange impression of the town, there are people energised and out partying on the streets every night! There’s culture down every alley and even if you don’t like ‘culture’, there’s also a very loud car race which happens around the same time. The rest of the year, while it can be difficult to remember the party face the city puts on, it is still a lovely place that I miss.

Foolishly I’ve managed to miss out Adelaide Fringe and most frustratingly, Womadelaide for the last few years as I always seemed to book my flights back to Europe in winter just in time for slushy side walks and freezing winds.

If you’ve never experienced Womadelaide festival you really should. For three days the most beautiful park in Adelaide is full of world music, hippies and happy, relaxed, white-middle class families wearing ethnic clothing bought at the previous year’s festival. It is a time of picnics, temporary camps under amazing old trees, children wandering around and playing diablo, amazing art installations and all my favourite people.

This year I feel even more sad that I don’t get to be in Adelaide at this most wonderful of times as during Fringe there’ll also be the first Format Festival, run by some very dear friends of mine. Only last week did I realise that maybe I should have tried to organise a simultaneous Academy of DIY here in Berlin as part of my DIYMasters project. So while there won’t be a Berlin Academy of DIY this March, I’m hoping that in the next couple of months I’ll organise a similar event celebrating self-organised learning and informal teaching and community.

I won’t be around in Adelaide for the festivals this year, but if you’re in Australia make your way over to my home town and have fun on my behalf. During February / March 2010 though, is when I’m planning on making a short return to a festival filled Adelaide, my friends and family and the smells of dry earth and eucalyptus leaves. Until then, I’m looking forward to watching Berlin move from grey skies to blue and experiencing this city as it wakes from its winter hibernation.

Jasmine tea has always been important to me when living overseas. My odd penchant for cold and wet places means that I keep on missing out on important stuff like sun and flowers. One of the ways I’ve got over that is by drinking jasmine tea, closing my eyes and thinking about Adelaide.

I think that one of the reasons why I’ve begun to focus on friendship is that it actively draws my mind back to people I care about. I have a strong academic and creative interest in the theory of friendship which is very important in motivating me to explore the area. But there is also the payback of regularly acknowledging the presence of the people I know, whether they are my most intimate friends or people I used to serve beer to.

i love a town by Fighting Tiger.

Dear Adelaide,

as you might have guessed, I’m leaving you. Surely you’ve noticed the signs?

For the last couple of years, things just haven’t been amazing, not the way I want it to be in the long term. I mean, I really like you and all, but since that time I spent with Helsinki, well, you know it’s been a bit different. I realise I just couldn’t commit in the long term, not in the way you wanted at least, getting a full time job, a family and a mortgage.

I know, I know… When I came back to you after the Finland incident at the start of last year, everything seemed to be great – I had big plans for you and me in the future. You were going to be my Radelaide – and none of those little niggling things would get on my nerves. But I realise now, I was trying to change you singlehandedly, make you my dynamic dreamtown or something.

It was unrealistic of me. We both needed to be changing together. I needed to change my expectations and somehow without you knowing about it, you needed to become something different. Maybe I should have communicated my needs more, told you what I liked about you (your food, your people) and encouraged you to grow and change.

Don’t take this the wrong way, you really have tried hard, and sometimes the results are fantastic. There are times when you glow and shine, when every night’s a party and I feel more hopeful about the future. But I can’t spend my life waiting around for every March, just so I can see your Fringe and Womad happy face.

And then earlier this year that Europe thing came back into my life in a couple of ways. I didn’t realise how much I’d changed, how much I needed the challenges of that type of relationship, of establishing myself afresh.

I admit it, there’s somewhere else. It’s early days yet, and I don’t know what’s going to happen – but I know that I’d regret not taking this opportunity, I’d always think of what might have been.

I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you earlier, but you know, I just wasn’t sure of myself. Now I know what I want, and it doesn’t involve you.

Maybe there will be a future for us further down the line, you know, when I’m ready to settle down and raise some kids. We’ve all said it, you’re going to be a great place to raise a family with. I’m sure that someone will come along, someone you can grow alongside at your own pace.

Oh Adelaide, I do love you, but I just can’t see myself being happy in the long run. I will miss you.

I’d better go, my bags are packed and in the hallway…

Your friend,

Pippa

I arrived back in Finland one year to the day after leaving. And my plan at that point was to stay here for a month or so, to make some side trips to visit friends living elsewhere in Europe and then to go home. I had sworn to myself that I would not want to stay away from Adelaide for any longer than 3 months – to do so would be in contradiction to what I stand for. I had plans you see, plans to save my hometown single handedly and to make it an exciting and dynamic city that draws young people from the world around. I had to go back home and do that.

I still do have those plans, but somehow they’ve become terribly confused in the last few months. Friendships that I’d begun when I was first in Helsinki became even more strengthened. There were offers from my old boss to work at a new club he was going to open – only a week later I became adamant that I’d never work in a loud bar again. At the same time Toph (who I worked with at Ratbag) had moved to Helsinki too – I had yet another friend to hang out with in this town. Then, I started to think – if I don’t want to work in a nightclub, but still want to stay in Europe for the summer – what could I do instead?

I also made other new friends and went to Pixelache Festival which ultimately deserves an entire (very belated) entry of its own as it sent me on a 10 day bender on the internets as I read and linked and thought [almost] far too much.

Suddenly I was overwhelmed with information about art, technology, collaboration, sustainable travel, ubiquitous computing and subcultures. I was reminded that my loves of gardening, urban design theory, architecture, craft, literature and culture actually can be combined with my technical background. Even though traditional games programming hadn’t been the ideal career for me, that didn’t mean that being a geek was a bad thing that needed to be completely written out of my life. Most importantly, I began to realise that there could actually be work that I would love to do if I combined my technical background with urban design. Most importantly this work could tie into the slowly gestating radelai.de concept: how can cities and towns best use communication technologies (web, mobiles, social networks) to become more vibrant and sustainable communities?

This of course is great. After a couple of years in the professional wilderness I have a path to follow. But after a bit of research into Urban Design degrees back in Adelaide I found out that I can’t actually start studying Masters until the beginning of 2009. Which has left me with 9 months to kill.

So I’ve been thinking once more about working somewhere in Europe for that time. It would give me a chance to live overseas again, I would be earning money – and there is so much more work related to my long term path in Europe. But I have two major problems: I left my house in the care of a housesitter with NOTHING packed up AND all the jobs that I’m seriously considering would be permanent positions. And before any of you suggest that I take up a job “permanently” and then quit 9 months later… Well, I’m pretty terrible at lying (even by omission) and that course of action would not really be in my best interests.

But then again, to not take the opportunities for doing this kind of work would also not be in my best interests – particularly when I could learn so much at any of the companies that I’ve been looking at. Would working towards this goal be better than formal study?

Ultimately I need to go back to Australia to organise my “stuff”, but after that, I’m not really sure what could happen.

I really am trying to summarise far too much in too few words – when ideally I should have been blogging about this all along, though my Twitter and Facebook updates have been fairly confusing reading for a lot of my friends!

Anyway, what I started out to say was that decisions about “home” and life are difficult, and even when you think you have plans, a path and a place to stay – your situations can change drastically.

Today, I went with Toph to the airport, just two months after he arrived in Helsinki to start a new stage of his career. A week ago, he found out that his mum was sick and understandably he chose to go back home to Australia for at least the next two months. I truly hope that everything goes well for Toph’s family, and I really am going to miss hanging out with him here in my other home, Helsinki.